The present invention is a method and apparatus for presenting price comparison to prospective buyers by enabling them to inspect a listing, or other visual or audible representation of plural items available for purchase.
Comparing prices and features of products offered by various merchants is a daunting task for prospective buyers because of the multitude of methods employed by merchants to communicate such information. Focus of the present invention is on products that are offered for sale in stores maintained by merchants which the prospective buyers may personally visit to see and/or touch and/or feel the product before making the purchase. Examples of such stores are Sears, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Macys etc. that stock products in various stores. These merchants utilize many different methods and media to communicate the prices and features information to the prospective buyers. One of the methods is to advertise prices and features of products offered for sale, by compiling them in a booklet or flyer to form a sales circular. This sales circular can then be mailed to prospective buyers using mailing lists. Another way is to send the sales circular as part of a newspaper either as an insert/attachment or as an advertisement. Yet another way is to use mass media advertising like TV, radio, or the Internet to communicate all or a part of the sales circular information to the prospective buyers. The sales circular may be part of a booklet published and distributed by an advertising company that displays prices and features for products offered by area merchants. Some merchants print catalogs, containing information on prices and features of products offered for sale, in addition to the above mentioned methods or by itself that can be mailed and/or picked up by the prospective buyers from the merchant stores. Many of these merchants claim to have the lowest prices for products and some even offer to beat the competitors price. Merchants also announce special sales events and distribute coupons that can be used to purchase products for a specific price and/or at a discount to the sales price. Prospective buyers sometimes make personal visits to the stores maintained by the merchants to find out the prices for products.
This abundance of information requires a major effort to collect all data on prices and features of products offered for sale by the merchants. Collecting all such data is made more difficult for the following reasons:
The merchants target their advertising to the area where their stores are located. For example, even for a small state like New Jersey (it is the 5th smallest state), Star Ledger has thirteen editions—one for each of the thirteen counties. Monmouth county edition of Sunday Star Ledger does not carry sales circular for Target but Middlesex county edition does. The reason for this is that Target has a store in Middlesex county but not in Monmouth county.
Many merchants mail sales circulars to holders of store credit cards and the prospective buyers that do not carry a store credit card may not receive the sales circular for that store.
Many merchants take people off mailing lists if no purchase is made for a pre-determined period of time.
It's easy to miss advertisements on TV, radio, Internet, or in newspapers.
Many merchants organize middle of the week sales that may be announced in daily newspapers and are missed by those who only subscribe to Sunday newspapers.
Coupons can help bring the cost down but are not easy to find. Many merchants run advertisements on TV or radio but can distribute coupons only by direct mail or newspapers. Some merchants offer coupons on the World Wide Web requiring the prospective buyers to have a color printer and install special software on their computers to download and print coupons. An example of such a website is the website coolsavings.com. When buyers purchase products without the coupons, they end up paying more.
Once the prospective buyers collect all the information they could, they have to organize the data and focus on the product they wish to purchase. This requires still more time and effort. Finally, they have to do the price comparison taking into account all special promotions, coupons, rebates etc. Price comparison is more difficult when the manufactures offer rebates that must be mailed in. It is even more difficult when the manufactures offer rebates and a group of products must be purchased to receive the rebate.
Some merchants bait the prospective buyers by advertising a price for a specific product and then try to switch them to another product when the buyer reaches the store to purchase the product with the excuse that the advertised product is sold out (this is generally referred to as bait and switch.) Sometimes the product may be sold out and the store may offer a raincheck which means either the prospective buyer start the search again (if they really do need the product right away) or they come back to the store when the product is in stock again. This makes the shopping experience very frustrating.
Price and/or feature comparison for some of the products offered for purchase on the World Wide Web (WWW) is available on many WWW websites. The examples of such comparative data can be seen at the following websites: compare.net, bottomdollar.com, top10guide.com, shoppingexplorer.com, shopfind.com, roboshopper.com, jango.com etc. However, these web sites primarily provide comparison for products offered for sale on the WWW and thus provide help to prospective buyers that do online shopping. These websites do not contain comparison data on daily/weekly/monthly sale events advertised by merchants as described above that is the focus of this invention. Website at compare.net provides comparison of product features. Website at www.bottomdollar.com provides comparison for products available on the WWW. Website at top10guide.com provides top ten picks available online for a selection of products available on the WWW. Website at shoppingexplorer.com requires the user to load special software on the computer and searches websites of participating merchants. Website at shopfind.com searches only those sites that allow online purchase through a secure SSL-encrypted connection. Website at roboshopper.com claims to have the fastest way to find best values on the Web. Website at jango.com searches websites of online merchants on the WWW and allows placing an order online.
A majority of prospective buyers currently purchase products that are offered for sale in stores maintained by merchants which the prospective buyers visit to see and/or touch and/or feel the product before they make the purchase. These prospective buyers have to collect data from sales circulars, advertisements, catalogs etc. and rely on themselves to do their comparison shopping. What is desired is a central source that compares all such data for products offered by a plurality of merchants and can present the comparison information to dramatically reduce the effort and time required in doing such comparison.